


More Joy Day Fable!Verse prompts

by sdwolfpup



Series: The Fable Verse [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, More Joy Day, More Joy Day Fest, Schmoop, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22293766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sdwolfpup/pseuds/sdwolfpup
Summary: For More Joy Day 2020 I took one word prompts for the Fable Verse from The Unicorn Incident. These are the responses.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: The Fable Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604713
Comments: 188
Kudos: 258





	1. Prompt: Forehead kisses

The first time she does it it’s like she’s accidentally discovered Jaime's ‘reset’ button and he goes completely still, his mouth dropping open, his eyes doing that thing they sometimes do where they go all round and soft and full of awe. She doesn’t understand why - they were talking about what to have for dinner, he said he would cook them something fancy, she had laughed because there was zero percent chance Jaime knew how to cook anything fancy, and then, overwhelmed with fondness at the disgruntled scrunch of his face Brienne had kissed him on the forehead. She’s by the refrigerator when she realizes he hasn’t followed her into the kitchen to continue their argument and when she looks back he’s got that look.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.

He looks _shy_ and that’s somehow even worse because it’s something she hasn’t seen before and now she wants to wrap him up in her arms and tell him she loves him and they are not like that. They haven’t said those words in that order directly to each other, once. They haven’t needed to; Jaime tells her he loves her in a thousand other ways and he has to know when she smiles at him or she cleans his weapons when he comes back exhausted from a hunt or she sends him a link to a dumb meme she knows he’ll like. They’ve danced around it; Jaime loves to say it for her - “because you love me” is his go-to answer any time she bemoans his presence - but that’s as far as it goes. 

“I love you,” he says now, instantly ripping her inner conflict apart, and it skitters through her, setting everything it touches alight and she wants to say _I know_ , because she does. She has not doubted it for even a second since the Unicorn Incident, but they don’t just _say it_ , like those are words that were meant for their mouths. She’s too big and ugly and Jaime’s too Jaime but he’s saying it now and it sounds okay, it sounds _right_ , and so she tries them on her lips:

“I love you, too.”

He doesn’t smile, he expands, and she can see his heart on his face and she thinks _put it back, it’s too much for me to hold_ but it’s been in her hands for months already and the weight hasn’t bothered her at all.


	2. Prompt: Olenna Tyrell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating on this prompt edges briefly into Mature territory, just FYI.

There isn’t a black market for Fable Zone items, there’s a Rose Market and the overseer of that market is the matriarch of the Tyrells, Olenna. Queen of Thorns they call her, which is, frankly, generous. Thorns at least you can strip away. Olenna sits in her high-backed chair and has sat there for decades and she clearly has no intention of dying any time soon. Retirement isn’t even an option. Brienne expects she would laugh whoever suggested it straight off of the planet and into the sun.

Olenna, Brienne discovers, hates the Lannisters. She discovers this because Jaime tells her when he drags her with him to the Rose Market to try to get a good deal on a particularly valuable item. Olenna hates everyone who’s not a Tyrell, from what Brienne has heard, but Jaime insists it’s worse with the Lannisters.

“Why do I have to go with you? She’s four feet tall and weighs less than my leg, you can probably take her.”

“ _Probably?_ ” he asks, offended.

“Almost certainly,” she says, keeping her face very serious.

He narrows his eyes at her. “I can take _you_ , wench” he says and she feels that way down deep in her center and she knows he knows because he looks smug in the way only he can.

“Shut up,” she mutters and he laughs. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“You’re my secret weapon,” he says.

“Am I supposed to step on her?”

“Just be yourself.” When she frowns at him he nods. “Perfect. Just like that.”

They are ushered into Olenna’s extravagant lounge and the Queen of Thorns is there, berating some young man bowing and trembling before her.

“Don’t you dare blame my son for this, you are my helper, not his. I don’t care what his doctor says about fat, I am old enough to throw an entire stick of butter in my tea if I so choose. Now go get me the whole milk, I need my strength dealing with a wayward pussycat.” The boy scurries off and Olenna looks at them, a tiny, frail old woman in a huge chair, and Brienne has the almost unbearable desire to curtsy.

“Come here, then,” she says. Her voice is strong and clear and, as they get closer, Brienne can see her eyes are as well. 

“Good afternoon, most revered Olenna,” Jaime starts and Olenna cackles.

“Stuff it,” she says, turning her attention to Brienne. “My word. Look at you.” Brienne shifts uncomfortably. “You must be Brienne Tarth.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I hear you’ve thrown in with this one.” She jerks one wrinkled, gnarled thumb at Jaime.

“Yes.”

“He’s handsome enough I suppose, but tell me: does he at least shut up during sex?”

Brienne chokes on her own shock and Jaime just smirks at her and she cannot look at him for longer than a second because while she is ready to dissipate and float away from embarrassment she is also thinking about last night when he was deep inside her and he kept going on about how tight she was and how wet and fuck, Brienne, you’re strong all over, I’m not going to last, I want to feel you coming around me, yes, yes, _yes_.

“N-no,” Brienne finally squeaks out and Olenna sighs like she’s disappointed but not surprised.

“You should gag him,” the old woman says and Brienne is one million percent done with this conversation.

“In my defense,” Jaime says, and Brienne thinks she _should_ gag him but it’s too late now, “I am very good with my tongue.”

Olenna cackles again, though this time there’s real humor in it. “Your tongue will do you no good here, little kitty. I’m only interested in what you’ve got in that bag.” She seems relaxed now, more willing to listen.

Jaime pulls out the pair of wings from a shadow-wing wyvern and Brienne can see the light spark in Olenna’s eyes. It’s a truly remarkable find; Jaime had been lucky to even get near the creature, let alone kill it. He’d been hired to do so when the creature had attacked a group of Fable Academics not long ago. Brienne had discovered Jaime is often hired for protective Hunts, not money-grabbing ones. He just happens to also grab money while he’s there.

“You caught this on your own?” Olenna asks. “Bit small, isn’t it? Must have been weak already.”

It’s clearly a gambit but Brienne is oddly insulted on Jaime’s behalf. 

“It was stronger than you,” Jaime says, “and Brienne thinks I’ve only got a fifty-fifty chance if we fought.”

Brienne is worried for a moment that Olenna is going to have a heart attack she laughs so hard. “Oh she’s much too smart for you, Lannister, you _must_ be good with your tongue.”

He just smiles pleasantly and in the end he gets a price that Brienne thought impossible when he suggested it. The Queen of Thorns has not ruled the Rose Market this long by being easily swayed by a pretty face. Brienne tells him as much once Olenna’s waved them imperiously out of her sight.

He shrugs, unbothered, stuffing the check she wrote him in his pocket. Olenna doesn’t believe in giving actual money and she refuses to join the modern age and transfer funds electronically, which Brienne doesn’t understand but the woman has been successful this long she figures she’s earned her idiosyncrasies.

“I knew she’d like you,” he says, “and more importantly, I knew she’d like me when I was with you.”

“What? Why?”

He looks as confused as she feels. “Because I’m better when I’m with you,” he says, like that makes perfect sense and then he kisses her hand and whispers a dirty joke about being gagged and when she’s laughing bright and sharp in the sunlight in a way she wouldn’t do if she were alone, she suddenly understands.


	3. Prompt: Hunter-Gatherer Con

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a SMIDGE, a TOUCH of sad at the end but just remind yourself that they do in fact fall stupidly in love with each other so it will be okay.

Brienne sees him the second he walks into the lobby area. She’s standing near a big pillar and there’s a fern that’s not _exactly_ in front of her but sort of front-ish. She’s not hiding, she’s just protecting her body from being stared at while also not having to be locked away alone in her room.

Jaime Lannister, her nemesis, saunters in by himself and she wonders if Cersei got there early, if she’s waiting up in the hotel room for him. Not that Brienne cares in the slightest, it’s just strange to see Jaime at one of these things without his stepsister at his side. It’s the worst-kept secret in Hunter-Gatherer circles, but they still like to pretend like they don’t come here to be together even though they’re on each other’s arms the whole weekend.

He checks in, nods to some of the other Hunters, and glares at Renly who’s innocently just walking through the lobby to the pool clad in nothing but his swim trunks, handsome and smiling with Loras trailing along after him. Brienne sighs wistfully.

Jaime looks around and she pulls back further into the pillar’s shadow and he doesn’t seem to notice her because he’s not yelling “WENCH” across the way, but she sneaks around the opposite side and hurries for her room anyway.

That night at the opening mixer she’s holding her drink, a Dragonfire the bartender had called it but it’s basically just a Screwdriver with green food coloring, when Jaime enters, again alone.

_Maybe Cersei’s sick_ , Brienne thinks, and then there’s commotion because someone has decided to start the swordfighting workshop early, apparently, using the decorative swords the hotel had put up on the wall. She peers over the heads of all the people in front of her and rolls her eyes. Hyle Hunt is making showy loops with the fake weapons, one in each hand, and boasting about his prowess.

“With every kind of blade,” he says and there’s genial hooting from the assembled crowd.

“Show us some moves, then!” one of the other Hunters, Ben Bushy, she thinks, shouts.

“With your pants off!” Tormund Giantsbane roars.

“Gods, no, leave them on,” Asha Greyjoy groans. “There’s enough pricks in here as it is.” The group roars with laughter.

“I’ll show you I can wield mine better than any of your Kraken friends,” Hyle leers at her and Brienne admires how Asha’s look of disgust sort of strikes him like a spear.

“You think you know how to wield a sword?” Jaime asks from the edge of the crowd and although Brienne can immediately tell he’s not joking, Hyle laughs.

“Better than most. I am teaching the workshop this weekend by request.”

They had actually requested _she_ do it first, but Brienne had flatly refused. She wonders how far down he was on the list. He was competent, but she can see even from here his stance is all wrong even for this silliness.

“Better than me?” Jaime asks, taking a drink of what appears to be an excessively large frozen margarita. He usually drinks scotch or something more stereotypically rich like that but this bar has a very limited selection of alcohol, she thinks because they were trying to avoid exactly this. She wouldn’t have thought him a fruity mixed drink type but desperate times and all that.

Hyle at least knows this isn’t a game now and he lifts his chin. “Shall we see?”

“If you’re not afraid.”

“I’m not afraid of _you_ , Lannister.”

But he _is_ afraid, anyone who’s not four drinks in - so, mostly her, given the state of the rest of the group - can see it.

Jaime hands his drink off to someone Brienne can’t see and then holds his hands out to the side in a very clear ‘bring it,’ gesture. “Then hand me a weapon, ser, and let’s find out for ourselves.”

Hyle looks like he wishes he was either a lot more or less drunk than he is, but he hands a sword to Jaime hilt-first and then takes a passable opening stance. Brienne would have him shift his weight a little so he’s more evenly balanced, but given the limitations of space and that she doesn’t know how heavy those fake weapons are, she thinks it’s probably fine, until Jaime also takes his opening stance and the difference between them becomes readily apparent. Hyle knows how to swing a sword; Jaime knows how to kill with one.

Brienne takes a long drink of her Dragonfire and watches the scene unfold.

It happens shockingly quick: they’re standing several feet apart, weapons raised, and then there is movement and Hyle is yelping and holding his hand and his fake sword has skidded away into the crowd.

“You’ve misplaced your weapon,” Jaime says. “Here, have mine.” He holds it out pommel first to Hyle, who is glaring daggers at him. Jaime looks entirely unbothered; it reminds her of the time during the Basilisk Incident when she’d been tracking footprints for days and she’d run into him, panting and bloodied, already standing over the body of a basilisk twice the size of a lion.

“You’re welcome,” he’d said, all nonchalance under the obvious effort it had taken to bring the creature down.

“For what? I was studying it!”

“And it was studying you just as intently.”

She’d cursed him out at length but he hadn’t seemed to care. His face here looks just like that, like whatever Hyle could do to him is nothing compared to what it took to kill a gigantic basilisk. That was probably true. She thinks he should have looked more contrite with her, though.

Just when Brienne thinks Hyle is going to use his hand as an excuse, he grabs the weapon from Jaime and makes a move that’s almost impressive, until Jaime steps aside, trips him up, and Hyle and his second sword are parted from each other by the ground. Brienne winces and a collective, “oooooh” of sympathy rises from the onlookers.

Jaime take his drink back and smirks down at Hyle. “We can try again if you like. I’ll make it more challenging for myself and try not to spill my drink.”

Ben is helping Hyle to his feet and they make the surprisingly astute decision to just ignore Jaime entirely. The crowd, sensing that the demonstration is over, spreads back out again. Jaime takes another sip of his margarita, makes a face, and then sets it down on the nearest table. Hyle is surrounded by his friends now, all muttering and giving Jaime dirty looks, and Jaime is noticeably alone in the crowd of happily chattering colleagues and friends. He shoves his hands in his pockets and glares around until he sees her and his whole face changes into something she is incapable of reading. Brienne waits for him to come bother her - she’s alone, too, so at least it would be better than nothing - but he just nods a little and then leaves the bar and she spends the rest of the evening wishing he had stayed.


	4. Prompt: Cat finding out about them

It isn’t like Brienne _tries_ to keep Catelyn from finding out about her and Jaime, it’s that Catelyn takes two weeks off immediately after the Unicorn Incident and thus misses the time when Jaime spends his days bothering Brienne in her office until she kisses him (which she knows she’s just rewarding bad behavior but his lips are so soft and his smile is so tempting and she’s only human). Then Jaime gets a Hunter contract he can’t ignore and he kisses Brienne again at least twenty times, each one the last, he swears, until the next one, and finally he leaves and Catelyn comes back.

“Brienne!” she says cheerfully when she comes into the office Monday morning. Brienne is staring at the chair Jaime has been (should be) sprawled in and she jerks her head up, startled.

“How’s Bran?” Brienne asks immediately. She knows the unicorn horn milk was a success, Catelyn had texted her the very next day about it, but she wants to hear it directly to make sure it’s real.

Catelyn tells her how he woke up only an hour after they gave him the tincture and he’d looked around and seen her and said, “Mom?” and she’d cried for another hour at least. She’s glowing as she talks about it, how he’s out of the hospital now and Ned is home with him while she comes in for a few hours.

“How are you?” Catelyn says, sitting down in Jaime’s chair. She sits properly, no legs akimbo, a normal amount of friendly interest in her eyes.

“Fine,” Brienne says.

“Wonderful,” Catelyn says, and she means it, Brienne can tell, but also her son has come back to her and she’s off about Bran again until Brienne apologizes and says she has a call she has to make and Catelyn smiles and leaves her office.

And after that it just doesn’t come up. Jaime’s gone for a week on his contract, and then he calls and says he needs to spend a week in King’s Landing, which makes sense, he does live there, and then the third week arrives. Brienne is late to work that day, which she doesn’t tell Catelyn because they don’t keep tabs on each other like that, but as she’s walking into WFRI, she hears Catelyn scream from the vicinity of her office and even as Brienne is running down the hall she’s already 99% sure she knows what’s happened.

“How DARE you!” Catelyn is saying as Brienne nears, her hands on her hips, staring down whoever is in Brienne’s office. “You are taking advantage of her good nature and I will not stand for it, Jaime Lannister, I absolutely will not!”

Brienne covers her face with her hands briefly and then comes up behind Catelyn and peers inside. As expected, there’s Jaime sitting in his chair, grinning up at her. Unexpectedly, he is entirely naked except for the silver-white pelt of a Little Valyrian lemur. covering the most inappropriate parts of his anatomy. He still looks inappropriate with his absurdly attractive bare chest and his long, muscled legs sticking out, but it could be worse.

“Brienne, let me deal with him. It’s bad enough I forced you to spend all that time with him looking for the unicorn.”

Jaime’s not smiling now, and Brienne exhales loudly. “It’s fine, Catelyn, really. We’re…” she gestures vaguely between the two of them. It’s only been three weeks and they haven’t really talked about what they are at all. “Together?” she finally says, her voice raising so high on the last syllable that Jaime cocks an eyebrow.

“You’re _what?_ I thought you hated him.”

“I thought I did, too,” Brienne says, and she looks at him and his worried face and his eyes that remind her of the meadow the unicorn had taken them to, and she smiles. “I was wrong.”

“I see,” she says, but she doesn’t really, Brienne can tell. “So you’re…together.”

Brienne shrugs at her mentor. “We didn’t really see it coming, but yes.”

“I did,” Jaime says, speaking for the first time. “You were the slow one.”

That seems pointed but mostly fair so she lets it slide. “Regardless of who knew what,” she says primly, ignoring Jaime’s swift smirk, “we’re here now.”

“And you’re okay with…” Catelyn waves her hand vaguely in Jaime’s direction, “this?”

“Well,” Brienne says, her whole face going hot, “I mean. Yes.”

“Huh,” Catelyn says. She is obviously not convinced Jaime hasn’t put Brienne under some spell. Brienne suspects he may have, but she doesn’t want to be saved from it if so. “Then I take back what I said. Though it’s extremely inappropriate to be naked in a research institute.”

“But fun,” Jaime says and Brienne stares briefly up at the ceiling and begs the gods to make him be quiet just this _one time_. They do not listen. “You should have Ned try it sometime if he’s not too ashamed of the family jewels.”

Catelyn glares at Jaime like she will actually murder him there in Brienne’s office and Brienne pushes past her to stand between the two of them. “I’ll make sure he gets dressed right away,” she assures her mentor. “And that he won’t _ever do this again_ ,” she adds over her shoulder.

“Aw,” he pouts quietly.

“See that he does not,” she says. And then, because it’s Catelyn, she leans past Brienne and says, “Ned most assuredly has bigger “family jewels” than you do, Jaime Lannister, and you better hope he doesn’t come on campus to show you up.” Then she turns on her heel and strides away and Brienne definitely, _definitely_ does not want to think about Ned Stark’s anything so she turns to look at Jaime instead.

He looks like he’s been slapped in the face with the funniest thing he’s ever heard and he doesn’t know how to respond to it.

“You’re trouble,” she tells him, and that seems to shake him loose. “And you need to get dressed.”

“In ancient times men only wore lemur pelts,” he says.

“You’re making that up.”

“Probably. Aren’t you going to come see what’s under the lemur, wench? It missed you.” 

“Please stop,” she begs him and he leans forward grinning wickedly.

“That’s not what-”

“I said last time, yes, very clever.” She looks around for his clothes, finds them tucked neatly under his chair. He’s just _staring_ at her, and the lemur pelt is twitching a little. “Stop that,” she says, but he stands and the pelt falls to the floor and he murmurs, “I think you should close the door,” and she’s only human and probably bewitched and if Catelyn comes back, well, it’s not like she shouldn’t have expected it.


	5. Prompt: Babies/kids

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a truly obscene amount of fluff. You should know that going in.

It’s six months from the Unicorn Incident before they have another one. They’re out together in the field between the two Incidents, but those are planned events. Brienne has decided, in the strange taxonomy her brain uses for Jaime and everything he brings to her life, that Incidents are only those occasions when she sees him when she didn’t expect to. 

Jaime is in the middle of a Hunt when she receives a critical lead for a topic she’s been trying to study for years, so she leaves him a voicemail for when he gets out and then she’s off to the Fable Zone in the forest near the Grey Cliffs, a fairly small one all told but the perfect place to find shadowcats.

And more importantly: shadowkittens.

She’s not sure that’s the name Fable Academics are going to stick with, but if she’s the first to actually see some, she’s pushing for it. Her lead tells her that there have been mewling noises heard in the area, though no one seems to know where they’re coming from and everyone is fairly certain looking for a shadowcat mom with kittens is asking for death but Brienne knows shadowcats aren’t interested in humans and unless the mother has been hurt in the past, she’ll likely be protective but not aggressive. Brienne just wants to see, not touch or steal, just be the first person to get a look at a baby shadowcat.

Shadowcub?

Waving off the naming problem for later, Brienne hikes deep into the Karhold Forest Fable Zone and listens. She listens for three nights until finally she hears it: a tiny, pitiful mew.

She goes still and closes her eyes.

_Mew._

There, to her right. Brienne moves quietly in that direction, freezes in place for five minutes, shivering gently, before she hears it again.

_Meeeeew._

The little thing sounds insistent now, and close. The area she’s in is a rocky outcropping at the edge of the forest, a hill about four times her height, and she scrambles up halfway and listens.

_MEW._

Much closer now, almost like she’s on top of the creature making that noise. There’s no sound from a larger animal, but Brienne’s hairs are standing on end as she waits for the low growl of the mother. When she peers around the edge of the outcropping, she gasps softly. There is a shadowkitten, clearly only a few weeks old but the size of an adult housecat, It’s bedraggled and skinny and very much alone.

“Oh,” Brienne sighs softly and the shadowkitten jumps about a foot in the air and scrambles for safety, hissing. That’s when she sees a glint of gold in the moonlight and hears Jaime say, “ _Wench?_ ”

“What are you doing here?” she whisper-shouts across the hill to him. She can see him crouched in the shadows now, equidistant from the kitten.

“Hunting shadowcats. What are _you_ doing here?”

“Gathering data about shadowkittens.”

“Shadow-what?”

Brienne rolls her eyes. “Baby shadowcats.” A terrible thought rolls through her. “You’re not gonna-”

“No!” he nearly shouts and the shadowkitten mews and hisses again, swiping a tiny paw in his direction. “Frankly I’m insulted,” he says more quietly and she shushes him.

“Complain about it later,” she whispers.

“I will.”

“Where’s its mother?” she asks, surprised the baby is still alone.

“Dead,” Jaime says sadly.

Brienne doesn’t want to know, but she has to. “You?”

“No. I was here looking for the male cat that did it. What kind of a monster do you think I am, wench? I feel like we need to talk about this.”

“Can we please talk about it once we figure out what to do with the shadowkitten? Is the male still around?”

“No.” Jaime’s eyes are green and dangerous as a shadowcat’s in the dark, and she has about ten different fantasies staring at him across from her, most of them extremely inappropriate for their current situation. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get near our noisy friend here without losing a finger.”

“Did you try to feed it anything?”

“Fresh out of shadowcat milk, sorry.”

She makes an annoyed noise and sees the flash of Jaime’s amused smile. “Good thing for you I pack well,” she whispers, slowly pulling her backpack off and rifling around while the shadowkitten hisses and growls at them in a manner that is leagues more adorable than threatening. Finally she finds some jerky and she wets it and pulls and works it in her hands until it’s mush. It looks horrific but it smells enticing.

The little shadowkitten agrees because it stops hissing and starts sniffing. Brienne puts some on the end of a stick and holds it out near the kitten. With a low growl the shadowkitten sniffs the end of the stick and then licks it. 

It takes an hour of crouching down and getting her hands filthy with mushy jerky to convince the shadowkitten she’s not going to attack it, and it comes near enough that she can grab it if she wants to. Jaime is sitting by then, his knees pulled up, watching her.

“You’re good at that,” he says quietly and the shadowkitten startles a little but continues to devour the latest round of jerky paste, rumbling a little in its throat. She glances at Jaime and he’s gone all soft in the dark. “You’re good at taking care of things,” he explains. 

Brienne blushes a little. “Someone has to.”

He moves up onto his knees and the shadowkitten shoots him a look but apparently Jaime counts as Trusted now because it doesn’t stop inhaling food. “Let me help,” he says and she nods. Jaime takes fifteen minutes scooching closer until finally he scoops the shadowkitten up in his jacket, holding the sharp little claws pressed close to its body. The poor thing hisses furiously for a few seconds and then seems to decide being nestled in Jaime’s arms in Jaime’s jacket is a good way to go and Brienne wholeheartedly agrees.

“You’re just a little baby, aren’t you? Such a ferocious little bean,” Jaime sweet talks to the shadowkitten and Brienne is having a whole new batch of fantasies now including one of him holding a human baby with Jaime’s golden hair and her blue eyes and she has to sit back on her butt with the force of it. It has been six months and she should absolutely not be dreaming about babies with him, even if he would be lethally adorable with one, even one that looks partly like her. That is the worst possible reason to have a baby with someone.

Jaime rubs his nose over the little shadowkitten’s head, and it mewls plaintively and starts purring against his chest, and Jaime’s hands are gentle around the little creature when he stands up and says, “we should keep it.”

“Jaime, no, we cannot have a pet shadowcat. Where would it _live_?”

“My apartment.”

She gives him a disbelieving look and he sighs dramatically. “I’m not leaving it alone in the Fable Zone to die. Who’s the monster now?”

Brienne stands and peers at the bundle in his arms. The shadowkitten has snuggled into his chest and is fast asleep. It’s so cute she almost wants to throw up, if it could get past the huge lump in her throat. “There are interim solutions between those two extremes.”

“Well I’m heading back to camp, you have the walk to convince me of them.”

She does, _barely_ , which is how they end up the Official Foster Parents of Artos the Strong, aka Mr. Squiggums, the first Shadowkitten ever reared at Sam & Gilly’s Home for Wayward Fable Creatures. When they leave Artos behind, giving him a last wave - “we’ll visit in a week, Mr. Squiggums!” Jaime shouts as she shoves him out the door - Jaime puts his arm around her and pulls her close and she thinks about him holding a golden haired baby the whole drive home.


	6. Prompt: snow

Brienne hates the snow. She never tells Catelyn that because Winterfell is snow-bound for three months out of the year minimum and sometimes five when the gods are feeling especially cruel. She is beholden to Catelyn for giving her not only her current job but a chance straight out of the Academy to begin with, bringing Brienne along as a young teenager on what were certainly much too dangerous missions. But Catelyn believed in her and so she followed where the older woman went, including to Winterfell Fable Research Institute.

But that doesn’t mean Brienne can’t hate the snow when she’s here. She thinks someday she’ll go back to Tarth and operate independently out of there and never feel like her nose is freezing off again, but that’s still far in the future so Brienne spends her winters hating snow and dreaming of sunny beaches in the night.

Until Jaime.

The first time it snows in Winterfell after the Unicorn Incident, Jaime is in town and he shows up at her office with hot chocolate and a bag of marshmallows. His cheeks are rosy red, he’s got a deep blue scarf wrapped jauntily around his neck, and when he kisses her his lips are cold and his breath is hot and the contrast makes her shiver.

“We should go sledding!” he says cheerfully and she points at the stack of books she’s been flipping through researching auroch migration patterns between Fable Zones. Ever since the unicorn led them into a meadow that shouldn’t exist, Brienne has been trying to figure out if other Fable creatures are able to do the same. So far her answer is documented as “I have no fucking idea,” but in the academic version of that. Less cursing, lots more equivocating.

“That’s a very nice stacking job,” he says and she throws a crumpled piece of paper at him. “Briennnnnnne,” he whines and she shakes her head and sternly does not smile at him. She knows he can see her struggling not to though because he slinks closer and sits on the top of her desk. “We could build an igloo and make out in it.”

She flushes but stares intently at the notepad which she’s taking all of her notes on.

“I know,” he says, and he slips back off the desk and stands next to her chair, leaning down until his breath is puffing gently against her neck. “Why don’t we go to your apartment and I can warm you up with just my mouth?”

She’s gripping her pen so hard she’s surprised it doesn’t snap. “Don’t you have something to kill?”

“Just time,” he grins. “And your concentration.”

He’s one-for-two so far.

“Jaime, I have to get an outline of this done in the next day and I don’t have a clue where to start. This is not helping.”

“I’m not trying to help,” he scoffs. “I’m trying to get laid.”

She snorts. At least he’s honest about it, she supposes. “How was sledding going to get you laid?” she asks, curious in spite of herself.

“I figured you’d hold onto me while we go down some terrifyingly huge hill and you’d be so impressed by my bravery that you wouldn’t be able to control yourself.”

“Would we at least make it to one of our places?”

“We wouldn’t have to,” he says, crouching down and turning her chair towards him. He places his hands on her thighs and rubs firmly up and down their length. “I can be discrete.”

“That’s a lie,” she says and he smirks.

“For the right incentive I can be,” he amends. “Why don’t we lock the door and I’ll show you.”

“Because I have to finish this outline,” she insists. He’s still rubbing her thighs in long, smooth motions.

“Go ahead,” he says, digging his thumbs in deep strokes along her inner thigh. “I can wait.”

She stifles a low moan and grabs one of her books, reads the same sentence eight times before she admits to herself that she still has no idea what it says. She sets it down.

“I don’t want to go sledding,” she says.

His hands still. “We don’t have to.”

“And I don’t want to build an igloo.”

“All right.”

“I hate the snow,” she admits.

“So do I.”

“But that thing with your mouth sounds promising.”

A slow grin spreads over his face and he surges up to kiss her. “It’ll be the best snow day ever,” he promises. He pulls her up out the chair and they leave it swaying gently back and forth, her notes and her hot chocolate forgotten on her desk, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night tangled in Jaime’s sheets and legs, she blearily reads the text message that WFRI is closed for the weekend due to the blizzard and she wakes Jaime up to give him the good news from her own lips.


	7. Prompt: vulnerable

Brienne wakes up the morning after the Unicorn Incident and she feels tender all over. Jaime Lannister - golden haired, green-eyed, mythically handsome Jaime Lannister - is in bed next to her, sprawled out and snoring softly. He takes up more than his share of the bed, but so does she thanks to her sheer size. In the end it’s a tie who has more space, and mostly it’s because they seem to be sharing most of it. His arm is snugged around her waist, her leg is curving over the top of his, their heads are almost on the same very flat pillow.

It’s intimate even though twenty-four hours ago she was ready to throw him off of the top of WFRI’s tallest spire. Twenty-four hours from now she may want to again.

_Life is funny_ , she thinks.

Brienne untangles herself from both sheets and man and manages to slide out of the bed without waking him up. She goes to the bathroom and stares at herself in the incredibly unflattering, sickly yellow bathroom light. Yikes.

She pushes her hair around futilely and then sighs and pokes her head out of the bathroom. Jaime is still asleep on his stomach, the sheets curving around his body like a place setting, presenting an extremely succulent feast for her perusal.

_I love him_ , she thinks tentatively, feeling the words in her heart. They burrow in, like the missing half of one of those split heart necklaces. He is the single most annoying man she’s ever met, but she thinks that may be part of his charm, which means she must love him because who gets excited about being annoyed by someone otherwise, even when that someone looks like a fairy prince? 

_He loves me_ , she tests, and that feels…less real. It was certainly real yesterday, and last night; even if he didn’t say it he was always more action than words anyway. A man doesn’t skim his hand over the tree trunk chest of a woman and groan hungrily while doing it if he’s not at least a little twitterpated. Still, when he starts to slowly wake under her nervous gaze, she is braced for the worst outcome, which is probably pity that she thinks this was anything more than Jaime feeling like he’s doing her a favor by relieving her of her burdensome virginity. Yes, pity is definitely worse than scorn. She’s been subject to both over her life and pity always hurts more in the end.

He lifts his head looking the opposite direction from where she is now, but it’s where she had been last night when he fell asleep. He reaches out to the empty space she’d occupied and then he turns his head towards her. It is not pity she sees in his eyes, it’s worry quickly washed away with relief, it’s a lightning bolt of desire across a gentle rainfall of happiness. He turns onto his side and props his head up on his hand, stretching naked and beautiful before her, but for as arrogant as his body is, his mouth is soft and vulnerable.

“Are you coming back?” he asks and he pats the mattress with his free hand but he doesn’t mean the bed. 

“Of course,” she says, and she slides into the circle of his arms where she fits perfectly, their two halves clicking into place.


End file.
